5 reasons to discover the beautiful Atacama Desert

The Atacama Desert in Chile is the driest in the world, some parts of it have never seen rain. It is the oldest in the world at 150M years and the highest in the world – we visited some parts at 4,600 metres. It is also simply huge at 1,500 sq km and has many varied landscapes from salt flats and deep canyons to moonscapes and sand dunes – we visited the lot!

Our town was San Pedro de Atacama, 30km from the Bolivian border and just over the mountains from Argentina.

Every view we had, and there are some stunning ones, has the backdrop of snow capped mountains, the highest at 6,739 metres.

A visit to Valle de la Luna

The Valle de la Luna is aptly name, it’s like nothing on earth I’ve ever seen. Mountain slopes glittering with what look like diamonds, it’s actually gypsum, volcanic rock alongside sand dunes hundreds of feet high with valleys of white salt and a backdrop of mountains with gleaming white snow – quite breathtaking.

It is…